The Rubik’s Cube Solution

This play opens with a controller addressing a group of citizens regarding their ability to solve a Rubik’s Cube within a five-minute time frame. The repercussions of not solving the cube will be droughts and hurricanes.

Play Title: The Rubik’s Cube Solution

Author: Sarena Parmar

Publisher: Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts

Anthology: This play is part of a collection entitled, Where is the Hope? Edited by Chantal Bilodeau

Genre: Drama

Primary Discipline: Environmental

Scientists: N/A

Source Texts: N/A

Character Breakdown: 4 characters of unspecified gender, race, and age

Controller, Citizen, Quiet Citizen, Anxious Citizen

Setting: Small children’s table in an unknown location

Time Period: Unknown

Synopsis of Play: This play opens with a controller addressing a group of citizens regarding their ability to solve a Rubik’s Cube within a five-minute time frame. The repercussions of not solving the cube will be droughts and hurricanes. This is the first glimpse we get into the connection that solving the Rubik’s Cube is really just a metaphor for solving climate change. The three citizens struggle with determining how to solve the cube. The citizens begin removing the stickers to place in spots that will solve the cube. The play ends with the characters looking to the audience for any alternate solutions. No matter the case, the solving of the Rubik’s Cube proves that there is a solution to climate change, we just need to think outside the box.

First Performance Date: Unknown

First Producer: Climate Change Theatre Action 2017

Performance History: This short play has been performed at various venues across the world as a part of the Climate Change Theater Action 2017. Among these venues were, In/Visible Theatre and Mountain Community Theater & Peter Gelblum.

Biography of Author: Sarena Parmar is a Canadian actor and playwright. Her play, The Orchard(After Chekhov), a Canadian adaptation of Checkhov’s The Cherry Orchard centered around a South Asian family, will be produced at the Shaw Festival in 2018 and Arts Club in 2019. She has performed with companies all over Canada, including the Shaw Festival, Stratford Festival, Canadian Stage, Tarragon Theatre, and Groundling Theatre. As a playwright, she has been playwright-in-residence at Soulpepper, and a member of Cahoots Theatre’s Playwriting Unit. Sarena is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada. [Taken from Where is the Hope? By Chantal Bilodeau].